At AEW’s All Out PPV, Kris Statlander won the Women’s World Championship, ending “Timeless” Toni Storm’s 217-day reign. Kris is finally receiving her flowers, a welcome sight for many fans who have been frustrated with her booking, including myself. But why did Kris win? And why now? Kris becoming women’s champion is a decision that means far more than it simply being her turn with the belt, and the journey she’s on has massive implications for AEW’s ongoing storylines.
The Toni of It All
First of all, let’s talk about Toni Storm, four-time former AEW Women’s World Champion. In case you haven’t heard of her, she’s an uncensored, unhinged old Hollywood star who’s proudly queer and always spoiling for a fight. However, that’s only the most recent version of her persona. In 2023, Toni Storm was a fairly generic punk character in a stable called The Outcasts, made up of former WWE roster members who felt excluded in AEW. After Toni lost the Women’s World Championship to Hikaru Shida, she had a mental breakdown and reinvented herself into the movie star we see now. This new personality fit her like a glove. Toni went on to have a very well-regarded storyline with young starlet Mariah May (now Blake Monroe in NXT), which borrowed liberally from classic movies like All About Eve and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? but with unmistakable sapphic overtones. This culminated in a brutal “Hollywood Ending” match at Revolution this past March. Toni retained her title there, but her protege/lover/nemesis died in her arms.
After this shocking turn of events, Toni didn’t mourn for long. She soon took up with Mina Shirakawa, who was previously in a throuple situation with Toni and Mariah. For most of the year, she’s spent her time looking for a worthy contender to take her title, defeating such impressive challengers as Ring of Honor Women’s Champion Athena and AEW TBS Champion Mercedes Mone. Toni was in search of her own murder, as she put it, and she finally found a willing murderess in Kris Statlander.
Born Again Kristen
Just who is Kris Statlander, exactly? Even she’s had a hard time figuring that out. The former one-time TBS Champion initially had an alien gimmick, then abandoned it to mixed results. She’s always been part of a group, first with the Best Friends, then with Willow Nightingale and Stokely Hathaway. It’s a fact that’s eaten at her over the years, eventually causing her to turn heel and betray Willow, claiming that she doesn’t need anyone. Her rejection of love and connection in favor of solo success, driven by paranoia, didn’t even work, as she would lose every attempt she made to regain the TBS Championship. Recently proclaiming herself “Born Again Kristen,” she’s awkwardly tried to repent for her actions towards Willow, and made a new friend in the goofy, multi-talented Harley Cameron.
The contrast between the two women couldn’t be more stark. While Toni is Timeless, gloriously unmoored from her original incarnation, Kris has no such luck. Her past failures, regrets and loves haunt her with every step. She’s still trying her hardest to get Willow to forgive her, then turns around and admonishes ex-Best Friend Wheeler Yuta for his own pathetic, misguided displays of affection. Unlike Toni, who has a string of lovers, nemeses, or both at once, Kris struggles with simply making (and keeping) friends. Yet it’s the memories of those past friendships that brought her victory. When Kris won, she won with the “seatbelt” pin, a move taught to both her and Yuta by their mentor in the Best Friends, Chuck Taylor. That was no coincidence. Nor is her new gear and tron, a resurrection of her old alien gimmick.
It’s significant that Kris was only able to win the women’s championship when she finally integrated all of her disparate parts into a whole. She’s now both human and alien, Best Friend and Stat Daddy, and more than a woman– in fact, she now refers to herself as a supreme being. Although this may not have been her intention, it’s a relatable narrative for neurodivergent women, who can lose ourselves in identities that don’t quite fit before finally deciding to drop the masking and just be ourselves. She won’t let anyone tell her who she is– not even Jon Moxley, who’s been trying to recruit her to the Death Riders.
Choices and Consequences
Kris Statlander turning and joining the Death Riders has been teased for months. The decision to join a faction that has caused so much trouble for her former friends would be heartbreaking, and something that her character would possibly never be able to come back from. But Kris has made a new friend in Harley Cameron, who was pivotal to her rejecting the Death Riders’ advances shortly after she won the championship. For a moment, it looked like Kris was considering joining, even reluctantly hugging Yuta, but the fear on Harley’s face made her realize she doesn’t have to repeat the past. She can do things differently this time and stop hurting the people she loves. Triumphantly giving Jon Moxley the finger, she gleefully ran off into the crowd with Harley at her side, their friendship intact. This choice to not repeat the past continues the theme of Kris standing strong in her own identity, and it also has some implications for who she may reconcile with down the line.
While Kris has a great new friendship with Harley, she still has people she needs to make amends with, and one she may need to save. Kris and Willow, once a tag team, became bitter enemies after Kris let Stokely Hathaway get in her ear and convince her she needed to go her own way. It’s a betrayal that Willow has understandably found hard to forgive. Kris explicitly rejecting evil and protecting her friend may make it easier for Willow to trust her again. And due to their shared past, since Kris has refused to join Yuta in the Death Riders, perhaps she may be the one to get him out of that cult; while he ostensibly sought her out for recruitment, he’s also clearly the unfavorite in the group and may subconsciously be searching for help from a familiar face. But Kris won’t be able to help Yuta turn back to the light by herself.
In addition to reconciling with Willow, Kris also owes an apology to Orange Cassidy, who has recently returned from injury and is poised to re-involve himself in the Death Riders storyline. Seeing that Kris has returned to her old self, rejected Moxley’s offer to join him, and even won the Women’s Championship with a move Chuck taught her may all influence Orange to forgive her. While I would normally be less than enthused about a woman’s storyline revolving so heavily around men, Kris’ journey towards forgiveness and acceptance can’t be complete without her former Best Friends.
All Elite Statlander
Toni Storm and Kris Statlander will fight again this Saturday, 10/18 at WrestleDream. Toni’s goal is to get Kris to prove to her that she truly does deserve the Women’s Championship; perhaps it’s her turn to become stuck in her own past, eternally longing to regain the belt. Toni’s current presentation hints at this; now that she’s no longer Women’s Champion, her entrance is filmed only in black and white, with none of the pops of red we’ve become accustomed to. Without the championship, the color has gone out of Toni’s world. But Kris has no intention of letting Toni return to her former glory. Through continuing forward imperfectly, striving to do better every day than she did yesterday, Kris will take the AEW Women’s World Championship into the future.
Images via AEW
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